The Tale of Kieu

The following post has two assignments namely;

1.The Tale of Kieu

1. Kiếu is rescued from prostitution twice by men who marry her. First there is Scholar Thúc who makes her his second wife and later when Kiếu finds herself in a brothel again, there is Tứ Hải. Describe Tứ Hải and explain why he and Kiếu seem to be a well-matched couple. What historical figure in Vietnamese history does Tứ Hải represent? 2. How does Kiếu respond when Tứ Hải gives her the opportunity to confront those who tormented and those who helped her? Support with details from the text. 3. Twice Kiếu finds refuge with the Buddhist nun Giác Duyên. Kiếu herself wishes to become a nun why is this not possible? What course of action does Kiếu follow instead? Do you agree with her choice? 4. How do you feel about the ending of the story? Do you agree with Kieu's decision to have only a platonic relationship with Kim? To what extent do you think her decision is affected by her culture? To what extent is it affected by her personality and her deeper spiritual needs?

2.“The Goal" Report

1. Provide the definitions of throughput, inventory and operational expense as they are provided in “The Goal." What is the common feature of these definitions. and why are these definitions more convenient to determine whether a firm reaches its goal? 2. How does “The Goal" define a bottleneck resource? Develop your own simple example of a bottleneck to demonstrate. (Not the examples from the book, not artificial examples!) Example: During the 20-30 minute period before the beginning of classes at Baruch. there are long lines that form in front of the elevators at NVC. This is an indication that elevators become the bottlenecks in the process that transports students from the ground floor to the floors where the classrooms are. 3. Provide recommended actions to do to increase throughput by improving the movement of flow units in a production/service system. (Identify at least 4 distinct principles.) Example: Inserting quality control before a bottleneck resource ensures that the bottleneck resource would only work on semi-finished products that are not defective, thus preventing limited bottleneck capacity from being used for processing products that could not have been delivered to customers. 4. Provide an explanation of the pitfalls, as discussed in “The Goal," of using cost accounting data for decision making. (Identify at least 3 distinct issues.) Example: Over-utilizing non bottleneck resources to improve efficiencies cannot reduce the unit costs, as doing so would not increase the throughput, but instead increase inventory.